


No One is Prepared to Admit that Newborns are Ugly

by OceanMelon



Series: short klance works [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Altean Shiro (Voltron), Alteans are monotremes, Galra Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, This Is Some Weird Shit, like echidnas or platypi, sort of..., they lay eggs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13209378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMelon/pseuds/OceanMelon
Summary: Lieutenant Keece, officer in the Rebel Galran military, has severely overestimated his knowledge of Alteans. Because Lance is in the corner, curled around a clutch of eggs andhow did this even happen?Now he's on his own while Lance is knocked out on some weird Altean oxygen deprivation trip, with eggs and then babies to look after and no idea how to do any of it.(AKA 'Alteans are too much like humans,' thought the fanfic author and then this monstrosity was born.)





	No One is Prepared to Admit that Newborns are Ugly

**Author's Note:**

> This was a world building exercise that got a little out of hand... Now it's a world building exercise with simultaneously some of the laziest and most intense world building I've ever done. It is also, coincidentally, possibly the weirdest thing I have ever written.

There was a terrifying moment when Lance’s body shifted to accommodate him.

“The benefits of being a chameleon race,” said the Altean with a sly grin, face flushed and pupils huge. “Gotta make sure the key fits in the lock.” And he started pressing kisses to Keith’s stunned face. “It’s what makes us reproductively compatible with most species,” he said between kisses but then he moved a little and his insides brushed against Keith and the Galran forgot to pay attention to anything at all. 

 

So, really, Keith shouldn’t have been surprised when he woke in the night and found Lance in a corner, back pressed to the safety of the wall and insulated from the floor by layers of blankets, curled around a clutch of three eggs. But he was. He was stunned. He just stood there, staring down at his partner sleeping peacefully, his face beautifully highlighted in the light from Altea’s twin moons.

“ _ Reproductively compatible _ …” he echoed dumbly as the true meaning of those words actually sunk in.

What the fuck? They’d only had sex once. Just how fertile was this guy? And shouldn’t there have been some discussion before actual eggs were laid? Even a ‘hey, Keith, how do you feel about kids?’ At least Lance’s insistence on making sure they were serious before they had sex made sense now, though he could have done with being a bit more vocal in his reasoning. That had to be a first. A time when Lance wasn’t vocal enough. 

But when he opened his eyes to a sleepy half-shutter, Lance didn’t show even an ounce of guilt. He just reached out a grabby hand towards the vague purple blur he could see in the dark and shifted a little closer to the eggs. 

“Keith…” he mumbled, still hazed with sleep. “Cuddle. Warm. Come.” And, despite everything that he’d put him through, despite all his shock at recent events, despite his own disbelief that this was happening, Keith was still incredibly weak to anything remotely Lance-shaped. He settled in against his partner, curling himself against his chest, toes touching, the eggs nestled between them, safe and warm. 

“I don’t understand,” said Keith eventually, his voice loud in the still room and forehead resting on his lover’s shoulder. “You’re a man?”

Lance bristled. “So what? You think I’m worth less just because I don’t have mammary glands, or something?”

“No, that’s not what I —” Keith took a deep breath. “Male Galra can’t give birth. I didn’t… How did this…? Why didn’t you even ask me?”

Lance cocked his head to one side, heavy lids blinking slowly. “I did?”

“You really didn’t.”

“I said, ‘I need to be sure you know what you’re committing to before we do this.’ And you said, ‘I promise you, I know exactly what I’m doing.’”

There was a heavy silence for a few ticks before Keith ducked his head and swore. “I didn’t think — it hadn’t even occurred to me that this was a possibility! I’ve never… I didn’t know.”

“Oh,” said Lance and it might have just been Keith’s imagination but it seemed like he shuffled away a little. 

“Lance…” Keith tried to ignore the pleading tone in his voice as Lance’s eyes glazed over and went cold. “Lance, no. I… Just because I’m…  _ surprised _ doesn’t mean I’m — I want to be with you. That’s all I want. I just want to be with you and, as long as I am, I’m happy with anything. Don’t shut me out.”

“That’s not enough,” said Lance quietly. “You can’t just be there for me. You’ll have to be there for them, too.”

Keith frowned. “I’m bad with kids. I don’t know how to talk to them. Shit, I don’t even know how to talk to adults. But I don’t hate them. Not in the slightest. And if they're anything like you, I know I won’t be able to keep myself from loving them.”

And when Lance smiled, that cocky smile, that first smile he’d ever used against Keith back when they barely knew each other and all Keith knew was that this Altean drove him up the wall -- the one he’d used when he’d cocked his hip to one side and said, “What kind of Galran name is  _ Keith _ ,” in a smarmy voice -- he knew that everything would be alright. 

“You love me,” grinned Lance. It wasn’t a question. 

Keith sighed and gave in. “I do,” he said, nuzzling against his partner’s neck. “Not entirely sure how it happened but I do.”

“I love you, too.” Lance pressed his smile against Keith’s mouth but pulled away from him before he could respond and curl him into his arms. “You’ll have to tell Shiro I won’t be going into work for a while.”

Keith groaned, ears flattening against his head. “He’ll kill me. Run me straight through with a sword.”

“No he won’t. He likes you!”

“He’s still the captain of the royal guard, Lance. I doubt he takes well to unannounced sick days. And what am I supposed to tell him. ‘Sorry, I accidentally knocked up your apprentice’? That’s not gonna go over well.”

Lance just laughed against Keith’s throat, his lips planting tiny unconscious kisses between puffs of air. “It’ll be fine. I told him we were gonna start trying and, I’m pretty sure I mentioned this,  _ he likes you _ . Thinks you could stand to relax a little but he admires your proactive-ness and hardworking-ness. You’ll be fine.”

Keith groaned again. “Alright but if I never come back, you’ll just have to pretend I said ‘I told you so’.” 

He tried to pull Lance closer against him only to be reminded of the eggs between them by a gentle ‘clack’. 

“I’ll need you, Keith,” Lance said gently as he ran his long fingers over the eggs, checking for cracks. “I probably wouldn’t survive this alone.”

Then he laughed softly when he looked up to see the Galran’s aghast expression, ears flat and eyes narrowed and cheeks the palest purple he’d ever seen them. 

“Don’t have mammary glands, remember,” Lance said, flicking his partner on the nose, “gotta feed the little ones somehow. Male Alteans… well, they basically convert their blood to baby formula; start pumping it full of essential nutrients. ‘Course that means there’s less space for oxygen but hey, that’s what I’ve got you for. A big purple husband to scare away the things that would eat me while I’m all sluggish and slow.”

“We’re not married,” Keith mumbled on reflex before the rest of Lance’s words filtered through his brain. “You mean, they’re going to drink your blood? That’s… that’s…”

“Cool?”

“Morbid.”

“A little bit, yeah. But we’ll do fine. We’ll be perfect and so will they and we’ll be a family all together.” His eyelids started to droop closed again. “A family all of our own. A mini Keith! Our… children.”

And all Keith could do was run his hands through Lance’s hair and feel the eggs pressed against his belly as he took a deep breath and tried to prepare for the coming weeks. 

 

***

 

True to his word, Lance got weaker. He also ate a lot. It seemed every moment he wasn’t asleep, he was either eating or asking for food but whenever Keith returned from the kitchen to find a slothish Lance, he always found that the nest had grown in his absence, so he must still be moving at least a little. 

At first it was just the nest itself. It got thicker and gained a bit of a rim like a bird’s but then Lance dragged chairs over and turned them into walls, rendered with blankets and pillows, and stretched a sheet overhead to make a roof to turn it more into a den than a nest. Then came the traps and tripwires made out of ordinary bedroom belongings — a shoelace and a bottle of soap and a necklace and a scarf all turned into weapons — that spread out from the den like veins until it came to the point where, every time Keith returned, requested food in hand, water bottle tucked under his arm, he had to wait in the doorway for Lance to crawl out and guide him through the maze. 

The Lance Keith had known until now was gone. Gone was the shiny, bright, bubbly man who smiled when he wanted to cry and laughed when others needed to hear it. And in his place was some sort of barely sentient creature. He never moved unless he had too. His breaths were unnaturally deep and slow. Even his blinking was slow. He still smiled. When Keith crawled in next to him, not quite able to stretch out in the nest that didn’t accommodate Galran body sizes, and curled around his partner seeking any sign of the man he loved, Lance’s face would stretch into a slow smile, eyes closed in comfort. It was a warm smile, content, but not really the same. 

“I miss you,” Keith whispered into his hair one night and prayed Lance wasn’t awake to hear it. He didn’t think he could explain missing someone who was right there in his arms. 

 

***

 

Keith’s children were perhaps the ugliest things he’d ever seen. Pink and hairless. Even with tightly closed eyes he could see where their eyeballs bulged from their skulls and their heads were crowned with stubs of flesh that would become ears. Their ribs were too pronounced, like Keith had seen on prisoners of war suffering from starvation and mistreatment, and their spines protruded from their backs into stumpy little naked tails. Their mouths were gummy except for two long incisors that they sunk into whatever part of Lance was closest, though he tried to guide them towards the inside of his bicep so that he could cuddle them to his chest. Even doped out of his mind on oxygen deprivation, Lance was always going to cuddle his children. 

Keith left the room when Lance ate the third egg. He’d known it was going to happen. Early in the nesting, when he’d still been mostly cognizant, Lance had explained that at least one egg in every Altean clutch never hatched, was never even fertilised, and was usually eaten by the birthing parent when the others emerged. It was some survival tactic — investing energy when it was plentiful to reserve for when it wasn’t. To be honest, beyond the fact that Lance was going to eat one of his own eggs, Keith didn’t pay a lot of attention. But perhaps he should have because when three weeks had passed and the children had grown into their own eyeballs and spines and ribs (though remained hairless), their sharp incisors fell out and Keith had no idea what they were supposed to eat now. Lance was at peak-vegetable. He was beyond giving advice. So Keith had only two options: stay where he was and watch his children starve or leave the den and get help. 

It wasn’t a particularly hard decision. He would have to leave again soon anyway for food and water. 

 

***

 

Shiro’s prosthetic felt too heavy on his shoulder, as it did most mornings. The joint pinched as he lifted the bag of training staffs from their hook on the wall. He allowed himself one grimace before he moved on. There wasn’t much he could do about it. This was just the way it was in the morning, before his skin had had time to wake up and his joints stretch out and his muscles get used to carrying weight again. He gave the junction between skin and metal a quick massage as he cast a glance around the training room, looking for anything else that needed setting up before his guards came in for their morning warm-up. 

Maybe he should at least ask Hunk to make a prosthetic he could take off at night, give himself time and air to recover. The trouble with that would come if they were ever attacked in the night. Would he be able to get his arm on fast enough to take his place as a leader in their defence? 

His musings were interrupted by the sound of the door sliding open on soft hydraulics and Shiro turned to see a Galran standing there, tail flicking irritably and looking like he’d just rolled out of his own grave. It was Lance’s partner, not that he’d recognised him immediately in casual clothes and with purple-bruised bags under his eyes. 

“Lieutenant Keece,” said Shiro, allowing all his surprise to show in his voice.

The man’s heels snapped together on what Shiro was sure was muscle memory alone and he dropped into a bow, forearms stacked one on top of the other, wrist to elbow and held out in front of him like a tray. It was a salute the rebel Galra had adopted since splitting from the Empire. Designed to show they meant no harm, it was specifically designed to make it difficult to draw a weapon. 

“Captain,” he replied, his Altean barely accented. No doubt that was Lance’s doing. The boy had a way of teasing people into bettering themselves. “Good morning.” And then the man Shiro had only ever heard called ‘Keith’ by his apprentice (and whatever the story was behind that, he didn’t need to know) just stood there, shifting awkwardly as if he wanted Shiro to speak instead.

So the captain took pity on him and spoke.

“How’s Lance?”

He stiffened. “Lance is… as well as to be expected, I think.”

“Yes, I understand I owe you some congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“They hatched healthily, I trust?”

“They did. A boy and a girl.”

“I’m glad. Have you thought of any names yet?”

“Not yet.”

By the ancients, this was like pulling teeth. Although the lieutenant had finally stopped awkwardly shuffling, his tail falling into a steady metronome swing behind him, so maybe that was a good sign.

“It’s actually about the… the children that I’m here,” said Keith and Shiro gave a sigh of relief. 

“If Lance needs more time off, I’m sure we can arrange that,” Shiro said preemptively.

“Thank you, that might be needed, but it’s not about that. I… Well, I just didn’t know who else to ask. I don’t know many Alteans and it didn’t really seem like the sort of thing to ask the princess.” He paused. The shuffling began again. 

Shiro couldn’t know it but Keith was battling down images of the captain in Lance’s position, sloth-like and dopey and not at all prepared for battle, and the idea was so contradictory to Keith’s image of him that it really did not sit comfortably in his head.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feed them!” he said at last. “Their teeth fell out and Lance isn’t really… awake enough to ask. Sorry if this is weird.”

It was so weird, Keith was sure. They’d barely had five conversations in the whole history of their acquaintance and here he was, having clearly just rolled out of bed, asking about baby food of all things. But it’s not like he had much choice. This wasn’t exactly a problem Galra tended to face. 

Shiro almost laughed. Of course this was the problem. They just wouldn’t be Keith and Lance if they didn’t have at least one major failure in communication for every endeavour they attempted. But he didn’t. The poor kid — and how was Shiro only just realising how young he was? — looked like a spooked animal. So he just crossed the room so he could put one hand on his shoulder. 

Keith looked up at where Shiro’s eye scales — entirely black until the light hit them and they reflected almost purple — twisted a little as he smiled. 

“I’ll tell you what,” the captain said, “I’m just about to run my squad through morning training but if you meet me in the kitchens in an hour, I can help you put something together.” The lieutenant didn’t reply and Shiro prodded him. “Okay?”

He finally nodded, small and childlike. “Alright. Thank you, Captain.”

“No problem whatsoever.”

 

***

 

The children weren’t eating. Of course they weren’t eating. That would just make things too easy for Keith. They’d sniff the strange green goo that Shiro recommended and go so far as to stick their tongues into the red goo that Lance’s friend Hunk, who had happened to be passing through the kitchens at the time, recommended but they wouldn’t actually eat. They just cried and tried to escape the den and scratched at Lance until he moved enough for them to burrow in under his arms. 

Keith felt like he was on the verge of tears, himself. 

He alternated between trying to force liquids into Lance to make up for the huge amount of blood he must have lost over the last three weeks, failing to get the kits to eat, and eating for himself. Time was hard to gauge in the den but it didn’t really matter anyway. Days were irrelevant when Keith never slept. Sometimes Lance woke up enough to open his eyes and Keith needed to be there and ready to jump on the chance to get some food into him. 

But the children… they were the biggest problem. The kits would not eat and Keith was starting to get scared. Should he ask Shiro again? But it wasn’t like Shiro had children so he had probably never faced this problem before. He could ask Lance’s mother but that had to be a last resort. The woman was terrifying. 

He was woken by a small foot in the stomach and realised he must have drifted off at some point. He’d dropped the spoon full of green goo and now it was smeared all over his chest. But that wasn’t exactly a surprise. No, the real surprise was the sight of his son, eyes still squinted shut and skin an irritated red as his fur started to push through along his spine, gently licking at the goo. 

It was the spoon, Keith realised distantly. They didn’t like the spoon. 

He had unimaginatively named his son Akr and his daughter Larsk until Lance woke up properly and could give his input and Akr whined when Keith lifted him off his chest and put him back on the ground. 

“I’m sorry, I know you must be hungry,” Keith murmured, “Just let me wash this off and I’ll get you some fresh stu— Larsk!” 

His daughter was making another break for the entrance of the den and Keith had to rapidly wake up enough to scoop her up in his hand. 

“Stay,” he told her, plopping her down next to her brother. 

Lance gave a soft groan in his sleep and rolled over. He’d been looking better the last few days. His face wasn’t so pale, the colour was coming back to his eye-scales and Keith couldn’t resist placing a small kiss against one before he crawled out of the den, pushing a clumped up blanket into the opening to keep Larsk from making another attempt at getting into the trap-filled bedroom. 

 

Finally,  _ finally,  _ they were eating. Tiny little licks at his goo-covered fingers, stumpy, still mostly-naked tails wriggling in delight. And Keith couldn’t help his smile at the sight. 

He lay with his back pressed to Lance’s. Needing to at least feel him breathing as he lay so still. And right there, with the sound of his breaths in the quiet of the den and his children finally satisfied, Keith felt like he could sleep for the first time in days. 

 

Keith was headbutted awake. His still-blind daughter, eyes squinted shut and skin a rash-covered mess, was pawing at his face. Her fingers hadn’t quite decided if they wanted to grow Altean nails or Galran claws but, whatever they were, they threatened to tear at Keith’s skin. 

Larsk whined, tiny tears slipping free of her scrunched up face, and without thinking, on instinct alone, Keith started licking at her ears. The whines stopped. Blissful silence for what felt like the first time in days as Keith soothed his daughter’s inflamed skin by assisting her new hairs stab through with his rough Galran tongue. 

Akr was chewing on Lance, his gummy mouth biting a line down one of his ears. Keith plucked him off with one hand and cradled him to his chest. He was wriggling in seconds. It seemed like they’d both inherited Lance’s hyperactive personality in their own ways — Larsk’s escape attempts and Akr’s squirming. Keith scooped some more green goop onto his fingers for Akr to keep him entertained and went back to grooming his daughter. She’d started whining again the second he stopped. 

Yet despite all this trouble they brought him, and all the fear that came with his ignorance, despite his exhaustion and the fact he seemed to be forgetting what life was like before he had two mostly-hairless worms to care for, forgot that the world still existed outside the den, Keith still hadn’t lost that sense of calm fulfilment that had engulfed him before. He loved his hairless worms. He hadn’t really meant to — been terrified that he wouldn’t — and yet here he was pressing tiny kisses to Larsk’s ears between licks and stroking Akr’s cheek with one finger as he ate. His children, their weird mix of Galran and Altean, furry and smooth, Keith and Lance, they were his in all their ugly glory. And when Larsk actually opened her eyes and blinked up at him with irises the colour of the cosmos, all navy and black and a deep bruised purple, Keith knew he was already a goner. 

 

***

 

The next time Keith woke it was gentle. There was no crying, no whining, no feet kicking into his organs or determined gums biting into his flesh. He woke slowly and peacefully to the sound of humming and the sensation of soft kisses against his cheeks. He smiled and, though the kisses stopped, a warm bubble began to form in his chest. He knew that humming voice and those soft fingers that traced circles on his ribs. And, when he opened his eyes, it was to a familiar blue -- deep and layered like the sea; so dark they were almost black in the shadows and a brilliant royal blue in the sun -- and the equally familiar, electric blue eye-scales that rested below them. Despite the still-sallow shade of his skin and the bags beneath his eyes and the ribs that sat too close to the surface, Keith didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful Lance than one that was fully conscious for the first time in just under two months.

“Good morning, my grumpy Galra boy,” he said with a soft smile, Akr wriggling in his arms against his chest.

Keith had only got so far as to return the smile when Lance spoke again, continuing his kisses from before. One on his nose. One on his lips.

“You’re incredible, you know that?” he said. “You saved me. You saved all three of us. You kept us alive. Thank you, Keith.” Another kiss to the bridge of Keith’s nose. “You did that all on your own.”

“I asked Shiro for help,” Keith admitted in a mutter, trying not to crane his neck up for another kiss. 

Lance laughed. “I’m sure he was very helpful. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m damn sure you saved my life over these last couple of months.”

Keith frowned, his lips moving to form the words again and again without ever getting there before he finally replied. “What would you have done… if I had…?”

“Walked out?” Lance suggested, all traces of his smile gone. Akr babbled softly and Lance bounced him almost unconsciously. “Left me the moment you realised what was happening?”

Keith swallowed and nodded. 

Lance didn’t reply in words. He just turned to look at the remains of the third egg, just shards of broken shell in a corner of the den, with his eyes cast down. Keith hadn’t had the heart to touch the pieces. It hadn’t seemed right, somehow.

“Oh,” said Keith and Lance gave a bitter smile. 

Keith felt a little sick. The idea that Larsk or Akr could have been  _ eaten  _ before they were properly alive just because Keith was surprised and unprepared… it felt undeniably wrong. At least, in this instance. Now that he had met them, grown to love them, he couldn’t imagine any other path. 

“I was only trying to thank you,” Lance said, lying down next to his partner, his wriggling son still held firmly in his arms. “You didn’t have to break out the hard questions.”

Keith threw one arm over them both and pressed his forehead against Lance’s shoulder, an echo of their very same positions at the beginning of all this. They were only missing… 

It was then that Keith felt the gummy mouth bite firmly into his ear.

“Ow! Larsk!” he startled, reaching behind him to hoist her over his shoulder and into their embrace by the scruff of her neck.

There was half a second of silence before Lance was laughing, laughing so hard he shook and snorted. 

“I can’t believe… you named our daughter… ‘girl’!” he said between guffaws. 

Keith’s nose twitched irritably and he coiled his tail around his own leg. “I didn’t want to decide without you….” he grumbled.

“Aww!” Lance cried, pressing yet another kiss to his partner’s forehead. “That is so cute! And what did you name this one?” He nodded down to the kit in his arms with a knowing smile.

He heard Keith’s response perfectly fine the first time but made him repeat it just because it made him laugh even harder. Only Keith would blank on temporary children’s names to such an extent that he ended up calling them ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ for a month.

“‘S’not that funny,” Keith mumbled, snatching Larsk off his shoulder as she attempted yet another escape from her parents. 

“It is pretty funny.” Lance’s grin was the sun. “But what about… Ari,” he lifted Akr a fraction in his arms, “and Lara, instead.”

“Altean names?” Keith said, peering Larsk in the face dubiously.

“With Galran inspiration,” finished Lance.

“What if they’re trans? Won’t such gendered names make that awkward?”

“Then they can pick again. Or ask us to pick again if they want a name specifically from their parents.”

Keith peered at Larsk --  _ Lara  _ again; at her big, stormy eyes and her toothless mouth and the ridge of purple fur that had finally finished growing out over her head and down her spine, at the tanned skin beneath it and the hardening patches below her eyes that hinted at the scales to come. She gave him a gummy smile.

“Alright,” he said at last, much softer than he’d been meaning to. “Lara and Ari.” Lara giggled in his hold.

“She looks just like you,” Lance said equally as softly, one hand ruffling the mane that darkened around her head.

“He has your eyes,” Keith replied. 

Lance shuffled minutely closer to Keith, letting the arm around him fall into the hollow of his waist and his nose brush against the Galran’s neck. “They’re so beautiful, Keith,” he said. “So perfect.”

“They were hideous a month ago,” Keith replied out loud. In the safety of his own head, he said something completely different.

_ They ought to be. They’re half you. _

**Author's Note:**

> I was so tempted to post this under a pseud, just because it is so weird but... there are some elements of the world that I'm using for another fic I'm working on and I didn't want to get accused of plagiarism (if I ever get around to finishing and posting that one...)
> 
> Couple of things:  
> \- Keith is so adamant that they're not married because marriage has very different definitions on Altea (where it's so fluid it's practically just 'dating') and on Daibazaal (where it's almost legalised slavery).  
> \- Anyone who has done even basic genetics will know that 'lock and key' is a legit term for a mechanical method of sexual isolation, particularly common among insects. Whether or not Lance knows this, is unknown.  
> \- Keith has a tail just because I wanted the children to have tiny little triangle kitten tails and... well, they had to have gotten them from somewhere.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed whatever the hell this thing is...  
> [My writing tumblr](https://thecowardlycreative.tumblr.com/)  
> [This post.](https://thecowardlycreative.tumblr.com/post/169130053514/no-one-is-prepared-to-admit-that-newborns-are-ugly) Come be a doll and reblog it for me ;)  
> [VLD side blog](https://vlddump.tumblr.com/)
> 
> And, don’t forget, if you like what I do you can always [buy me a kofi?](https://ko-fi.com/U7U2GBKM)


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